Jill Adler Grano jokes about her early political career as "that kid" who served on student government from third grade all the way through high school.

Now, 11 years since she moved to Boulder, Grano's re-engaging as a political candidate. As a young mother, she said, she has only recently found the time to be able to run for office.

"This is my passion," said Grano, a native of Virginia.

"Community work is what I love — engaging with my community on issues that affect all of us and thinking about solutions for all of us. I don't want to speak in hyperbole, but I really feel like it's a calling. This is the thread through my life."

She's a real estate agent deeply interested in housing issues, and she's strongly supportive of Boulder's municipalization effort. Just below those priorities, she said, are "social justice issues around homelessness and small business support."

On housing, Grano said the greatest untapped tool to promote affordability is the creation of zoning overlays on commercial and industrial property. She argued the city can have more mixed-use projects on those kinds of sites by putting housing above first-floor uses, without a net loss of commercial and industrial space.

"We have a lot of areas that could become automatic 15-minute neighborhoods without having to scrape everything," she said, "but they're just not zoned for that yet."

In general, she'd like to see a more flexible approach to zoning as it pertains to housing. The city's code incentivizes scrapes and rebuilds as older properties turn over, she said, and discourages "slightly more funky, higher-density" reboots.

She noted that more than 80 percent of residential space in Boulder falls under low-density residential zoning, which she believes limits opportunity for creative developments.

A group of young women approached her recently about a 0.4-acre property they wanted to buy, on which there sat a single, older home. Their plan was to put tiny homes around the site, and use the existing home as a community hub.

"There's nothing in our code that allows for that," Grano said. "Instead, that was purchased by a developer, who plans to build a 5,000-square-foot home."

Grano also favors streamlining the development review process for affordable housing proposals, which usually take at least a year to win approval. Boulder should "empower staff to find 'yes'," she said, and advance these projects without always sending them to the Planning Board.

She wants to give density bonuses to developers, reduce fees on construction of affordable housing, reduce parking requirements and form a community land trust to preserve affordability.

Dwindling availability of viable space for small businesses is similarly troubling to Grano, who's interested in more tax rebates and incentives for small businesses.

Downtown, she'd like to create an "alley culture" that puts commercial activity in the alleys currently used mainly for parking and trash.

Related to the issue of small business affordability, she said, is the fact that employees of those businesses often can't pay the rents required to live in Boulder.

"There's social justice implications," Grano added, when so many can't even consider living where they work, while 40 percent of those who do live here spend at least half their income on housing.

Also on the topic of equity implications, Grano's optimistic about the city's new long-term homelessness strategy, but wants to ensure homeless families, children and battered women don't fall through the cracks.

On transportation, she said she's prepared to think in new ways.

"We as a country and certainly as a region have embraced the automobile and built around it, and I think it's time to embrace alternate modes," she said.

She wants to build a "true cycleway" throughout the city, and hopes Boulder will revisit the idea of "right-sizing" some of its streets to create more space for bicycle travel. Both 13th and 19th streets have high potential, she said.

It's Grano's belief that community controversies over development and the previous "right-sizing" of Folsom Street, among others, could be assuaged by more productive dissemination of information to the public, so that citizens "actually know what they're deciding between."

On one major local debate — Boulder's bid for a municipal electric utility — Grano is unequivocal in her support for the project, and hopes that voters will pass the proposed tax that would continue funding it.

"This is a marathon," she said. "I think we live in a time of instant gratification. People say that we voted on this six years ago, so why isn't it done already? Yes, we should've foreseen that this would be a longer process, but this hasn't been done before, and so it's difficult to see into the future."

The electric utility Boulder's long fought for, she said, should be seen as part of a vision for the city being progressive, forward-thinking and green, pushing forth on decarbonization in a way that inspires other cities to do the same.

She also hopes that through zoning and incentives, the council can help Boulder stay a "little bit weird."

"I love the funkiness of our town," Grano said, "and I hope we can find ways to keep that."

Dye pours in 19 for TrojansSmothering. Confounding. And just a tad frustrating ... at least for the opposition.
Longmont's defense, whether they are playing a 1-3-1 zone, 2-3 zone or man-to-man -- and it can switch from possession to possession -- can give teams fits. Full Story

The Boulder alt-country band gives its EPs names such as Death and Resurrection, and its songs bear the mark of hard truths and sin. But the punk energy behind the playing, and the sense that it's all in good fun, make it OK to dance to a song like "Death." Full Story